Traditional landline telephone services are circuit-switched, meaning every call is transmitted over dedicated lines reserved for that particular call. Long distance calls are transmitted from the user's telephone line over copper wires to a local telephone company's network switch, which then converts the call to a digital format and hands it off to a long distance carrier. The long distance carrier then routes the call over its network to the local telephone company that serves the recipient of the call. That carrier's local network switch then converts the call from the digital format to analog signals and connects the call to a line serving the recipient. As long as the call is ongoing, a circuit—a dedicated splice of bandwidth—remains open throughout all three networks involved in transmitting the voice signals.
Unlike traditional landline telephone service, the Internet and similar types of networks are packet switched data networks that use specially formatted packets to carry digital data. The basic networking protocol that enables the communication of such packets across the interconnected networks forming the Internet, and between the computers with diverse hardware architectures and various operating systems that form such networks, is the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (“TCP/IP”). While TCP/IP is an excellent protocol for accurately and efficiently transmitting most data packets over the Internet, it does not work as well with real-time data because delays can be introduced into the output stream. The protocol used to transmit real-time voice conversations over a data network using the Internet Protocol (“IP”) is the Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”). A VoIP enabled system is generally capable of handling a telephone call over the Internet in much the same manner as a TCP/IP enabled device is capable of handling a stream of data over the Internet, but without significant delays between packets.
In practice, an IP telephony user dials a toll-free number to connect the user to an IP telephony gateway. The gateway acts as a bridge between the public telephone network and the public or private IP network providing the service. Once connected to the gateway, the user generally dials (through a phone or computer controlled dialer) his or her account number (for billing purposes) and the destination telephone number of the call (although other arrangements which exclude the need to dial account numbers are also possible). The gateway receives the resulting telephone signals generated by the dialer on one side, converts them to IP packets, and outputs the packets to public or private IP networks for routing to the terminating user, and vice versa. A typical packet includes 10 to 30 milliseconds worth of conversation. Each packet is coded with the second party's telephone number, and compressed for rapid transmission.
The packets travel the IP network, passing through routers, computers that operate like switches by reading the addresses on each packet and assigning them to appropriate transmission lines, to arrive at a gateway that decompresses them and converts the packets back into a voice transmission signal. The gateway then passes the call to the local telephone network, which delivers it to the intended party.
In order to locate any specific point, or host, on the Internet, a unique IP address can be used for each host. A host can have a dedicated IP address, as is frequently the case with large bandwidth access customers, or a dynamically generated IP address, as is the case with any dial-up user. A number of users can also share a single IP address and rely on intra-network devices to identify which users are placing or receiving calls. Since IP addresses are numerical, and therefore difficult to remember, or dynamic, and therefore constantly changing, and because many users are connected to different hosts all the time, many users are also assigned more permanent types of addresses, such as a Simple Mail Transport Protocol (“SMTP”) e-mail address or a Voice Profile for Internet Mail (“VPIM”) voicemail system address. There are many other types of addressing mechanisms available on the Internet.
So as to technically accommodate the growing number of telephone users around the world, as well as an ever-increasing interest in Internet telephony, the International Telecommunication Union (“ITU”) has adopted a number of additional standards or protocols. One such protocol is E.164, which provides a uniform means for identifying any telephone number in the world to any telephony user in the world. This protocol has been widely adopted, along with other protocols, such as H.323 and H.450, which collectively operate to improve the quality and functionality of IP telephony. As explained in more detail below, for purposes of the present invention the E.164 protocol is the most important.
(1) E.164. E.164 is the ITU Standardization Sector (“ITU-T”) recommendation for Global Switched Telephone Network (“GSTN”) numbering. E.164 is a sixteen digit numbering scheme that is presently capable of providing a unique telephone number for every subscriber in the world. The E.164 address provides a globally unique, language independent identifier for resources on public telecommunication networks. E.164 numbers are used to identify ordinary telephones, fax machines, pagers, and data modems.
(2) IP Address. An IP address, a basic component of the Internet Protocol, is a 32-bit number that identifies each unique host capable of sending or receiving information across the Internet. An IP address has two parts: an identifier of a particular network on the Internet; and an identifier of the particular host (the host can be a server or a workstation) within that network. To locate a particular host, a user could simply enter the IP address for that host into a World Wide Web (“WWW” or “Web”) browser. A Web browser is software that greatly simplifies the use of the Internet. Web browsers allow computer users to easily navigate the Internet by assisting in the selection, retrieval, and interaction with various resources on the Web.
(3) Uniform Resource Identifier (“URI”). The URI can be used to identify any form of resource available over the Internet, such as a locator or a name, or both. The term Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) refers to the subset of URI that identify resources via a representation of their primary access mechanism (e.g., their network “location”), rather than identifying the resource by name or by some other attribute of that resource. The term Uniform Resource Name (“URN”) refers to the subset of URI that are required to remain globally unique and persistent even when the resource ceases to exist or becomes unavailable. Since most users have a difficult time utilizing and remembering 32-bit numbers, such as the IP address, the URL was developed. The URL is presently an ASCII-based address that can lead or jump a user, by entering it into a browser, to a file on any computer connected to the Internet anywhere in the world. Efforts are presently underway to expand URLs beyond the ASCII character set, so characters from languages other than Latin-based languages, such as Kanji, could also be used. The standard convention for writing URLs is as follows: protocol to be used/host's name/folder or directory on host/name of file or document requested. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”) is the protocol used to search host systems for displayable Web pages and related files. But other protocols, such as the File Transfer Protocol (“FTP”), which represents the simplest manner of exchanging files between computers on the Internet, as well as the “news” and “mailto” protocols could also be used. The host name is usually expressed using the domain name system (“DNS”). Different DNS servers connected to the Internet maintain databases of host names (IP addresses) that correspond to each domain name. Thus, when a user enters the text <www.xyz.com> into a browser, the text is parsed into search hook objects, a search engine is then used by the browser to search one or more servers for files, news, locations, etc., matching the search hook object, such as an IP address corresponding to that domain name. If a host, file or location can be located, the user is then directed or jumped accordingly. If no corresponding resource can be located using any of the available protocols, the user is provided other information, such as a “file not found” message. E-mail messages and many other different types of messages sent or received by hosts must similarly include IP addressing information in order operate.
(4) Hypertext Markup Language (“HTML”). HTML is the set of symbols, codes or words (the “markup”) that is inserted in a file intended for display on a Web page. The markup tells a requesting browser how to display website pages, words and images for the user of that browser. Each individual markup code is referred to as an element. Some elements come in pairs that indicate when some display effect is to begin and when it is to end.
(5) IP Telephony Terminal. This term is generally used to refer to a set of facilities for managing the delivery of voice information using the IP. As previously noted, VoIP is one means of delivering voice data using the Internet Protocol.
While the preferred embodiment of the present invention relies on existing E.164 numbering management systems, the operation of the present invention is not dependent on these systems. At the present time, the ITU Telecommunication Standards Board assigns country/service codes, and within a geographic area, a national or regional numbering administration has the responsibility of managing the numbering plan for the countries assigned to that area. To have the E.164 number allocation process managed by the existing numbering plan administrations can expedite the allocation process, leading to an earlier deployment of Internet telephony services.